At the online outpost of libertarian-leaning Reason Magazine, Los Angeles writer, musician and web journal-ist Matt Welch offers up some thoughts on California FAIR Plan, the residual insurance mechanism that provides coverage for many of the state's fire-prone hillside residences. Originally created in the 1960's FAIR plans were intended to make insurance coverage more available and more affordable in inner-city areas recovering from civil unrest. Since then, in California at least, the FAIR Plan has evolved principally into a source of subsidized insurance for high-risk, high-rent property owners. Welch suggests re-tooling or abolition of the program, and a shift of the costs of coverage back to those who live in the most endangered locations:
If Malibu residents seem like unlikely beneficiaries of legislation aimed at aiding inner-city minorities, consider that the FAIR plan is just the tip of the Colony's welfare iceberg. Between 1993 and 1996 alone, the famous seaside area was declared a Federal Disaster area five times, triggering more than $60 million in firefighting and cleanup costs, and untold millions more in the form of disaster relief, federally backed below-market Small Business Administration loans, tax breaks, and the day-to-day prevention of further conflagrations (Malibu has five L.A. County Fire stations alone).* * *
But then, the whole project of Southern California living is one giant taxpayer-financed battle to stuff more than 20 million people into a water-scarce ecology with massive earthquake fault lines, fantastically steep mountains, and hillsides that desperately yearn to burn. Transferring some of those costs onto those of us happily foolish enough to live here makes sense. Getting the government out of the brush-fire insurance business—and introducing competition to underwrite millionaire Malibu residents—seems like a worthwhile first step.
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